Visiting Cy Young – part one

This
time of year the day light hours are shorter, yet it seems to make the day
longer, traveling at the start and end of the day in the dark gives a deceptive
lack of time to do some things.

The end of the baseball season has put us into the awards for
baseball, it always seems you get those players winning because of name or
because they have more highlight reels than others, we know the process of
awards is very much a personal choice matter, even when using stats to convince
yourself, that your guy should have won, can be very ambiguous, as with most
numbers they can be made to reflect what you want, because stats don’t show the
big picture, there is no getting away from the fact that there is no fair way to
decide on award recipients.

The National League Cy Young award, for me and it seems the vote
givers was a no brainer, no matter how hard fans of other teams may have tried
to portray the hard work their guy had done, there was no getting away from the
fact, Roy Halladay was the clear winner, so congratulations to the Doc on his
being voted as the 2010 NL Cy Young winner.

If you read my last
post, then you’d know I am apparently being confused as a ‘Pro Blog’, and
since not everyone can grasp the dark sarcastic British humor, I at times
attempt to instill into my writings, I have chosen to take a more self research
view to this post and attempt to be a little more serious, well that was the
concept when I started this post.

The Cy Young award is given out each year to an American League
and National League pitcher and many of you know it as an award which utlilizes
the name of one of baseballs greatest pitchers, as with all claims of the
greatest it is debated as to who actually is, but that’s not what this is about.
Since the baseball antics of Cy Young seem to be well documented, I decided to
look into the man before and after baseball and I must say I was a little
surprised at what I discovered.

First things first, hit google, as with most things it’s
over to Wikipedia
‘the free encyclopedia’ to discover more information. Now if your one of
those who believe everything you read, then I hope you have a happy life, but if
your one of those with some intelligence, then you know, ‘you get what you
pay for’ and when it’s ‘free’ there is always a reason. So with this in mind
I checked some of the information, seems the links to Mr. Youngs biography are,
well, missing links. The CMG
Worldwide doesn’t even list Mr. Young, or Cy Young as a client, so I headed
elsewhere.

Since the web extends beyond the boundaries of the Wakipedia, I
was able to locate an actual place of birth for Mr. Cy Young, and with the aid of google
maps, there was, Gilmore, Ohio. Further assistance from my trusted
iPhone and a wonderful free app named ‘MapQuest’ I now had turn by turn directions
and decided on a ‘Road Trip’.

I am not sure if you’ve ever taken a road trip to somewhere that
you have no idea of what you’ll find, but I always try to picture what I think I
should find, in this case, an icon of America’s national pastime, let me see,
maybe a plaque where he lived, or at the very least where he was born, how about
the town road sign telling all visitors it’s the town where Cy Young was born.
Nope, nada, nought, nothing….

….Now you may think this is fiction, but I can tell you I went
there, I took this picture and I can also tell you just over the brow of the
hill you see in front of you is a 4 way intersection with 3 stop signs and what
you see is the most densely populated part of Gilmore, Ohio. This is a village,
not a town, it is mostly farm land and a good portion of it is Amish owned and
operated. This didn’t deter me from my quest, I was still not able to find out
where his farm land was, or his house, but I do understand it is now owned by
the Amish, it’s location however is still a mystery in the process of being
solved.

So anyone that has read a little about Cy Young, knows his name
was Denton True Young and that the nickname ‘Cy’ comes from the abbreviated name
the ‘Cyclone’ which was given him when he first visited a semi-pro club in
Canton, Ohio, due to the speed he was throwing the ball, some say it was the
destruction of the fence he threw the balls at during his tryout for the club,
some say it was the young catcher catching his throws that claimed “He
throws the speed of a cyclone”, who knows, except that Ken Burns was wrong.

With my trusty iPhone singing out my directions, I decided maybe
I could get more information at the site of his grave…..

to be continued, my next post – part two, where I visit the supposed burial
site of Mr. Denton True ‘Cy’ Young…